Floor cleaning in public, commercial, institutional and industrial buildings have led to the development of various specialized floor cleaning machines, such as hard and soft floor cleaning machines. These cleaning machines generally utilize a cleaning head that includes one or more cleaning tools configured to perform the desired cleaning operation on the floor surface.
FIG. 9 is a perspective view of a hard floor sweeping and scrubbing machine 300 disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,407, which is assigned to Tennant Company of Minneapolis, Minn. The machine 300 uses a cleaning head 302 having two cleaning tools 304 in the form of cylindrical brushes. The cleaning tools counter-rotate in the directions indicated by arrows 306 and 308. Water and detergent are sprayed on the floor ahead of the brushes so the brushes can scour the floor at the same time they are sweeping debris from the floor. A vacuum squeegee 310 removes liquid waste from the floor during the wet scrubbing and sweeping operations. The cleaning tools 304 engage each other such that debris on the floor is swept between the two cleaning tools and is directed into a waste hopper 312 by a deflector 314. Over time, the cleaning tools 304 will shrink due to wear resulting in a loss of engagement with each other and a reduction in sweeping performance.
There exists a continuous demand for improvements to floor sweeping and/or scrubbing machines including, for example, maintaining sweeping performance of the cleaning head as the cleaning tools wear and reducing wear on the cleaning tools.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.